Attack: The Best Form Of Defence (Body Training Systems (BTS) Body Attack – Les Mills)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Body Training Systems (BTS) Body Attack – Les Mills
Date:	24/04/09 (615 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High energy, makes you sweat (and swear)

Disadvantages: Repetitive after a while

Can you walk forward and clap, and back and clap?

Are you able to run circles around the slow people in a class while literally running in circles around them?

Do you like an exercise class that makes you sweat, swear, and stagger out of there?

Do female instructors with permed mullets turn you on?

Then Body Attack is the class for you.


(NB: mulleted instructors may not be available at locations outside the Mexico City area)



One of the best things about teaching English abroad is the cancelled classes, and it's especially good when it's my Tuesday morning class which gets cancelled as that's the only day of the week my gym offers Body Attack classes. I don't think they can offer it more often, because they only have one Body Attack sticker for the massive wall calendar of classes. Once they changed the usual Body Step class on a Friday for a Body Attack one, and they had to move the sticker from its normal Tuesday slot, leaving a suspicious coloured gap, like when you take down a picture off a wall and see the colour the wall used to be.

When I was first getting into the Les Mills franchise of classes (Body Step, Body Pump, Body Jam...) I confused Body Attack and Body Combat, never able to remember which was the punching class, since I would class that as a form of attack as well as a form of combat. Well, the kickboxing class is called Body Combat, and what's left -Body Attack - is totally different. You're not attacking other people, you're attacking your own body until you want to beg yourself for mercy and run away from yourself an hide in the corner.

Body Attack is highly choreographed low-choreography class. Confused? What I mean is, every step is arranged in time to the music, and every class is the same in that sense. The Les Mills franchise takes the guess work out of instructor-invented choreography, providing complete routines, music and uniforms (mullets may be included, but I think are an optional extra). I say it's low choreography though because it's not a dance aerobics class. You're not spinning or jumping or moving in figure of eights during the class. Instead, you might find yourself doing the odd grapevine, lots of knee lifts, some jumping jacks and so on. The official blurb says that it is a "sports-inspired cardio workout" which fits with my experience - you do a lot of reps of exercises athletes might do to build strength or stamina for example. They also say that it is a class that should appeal to anyone, motivating everyone from the weekend athlete to the hard-core competitor to meet their fitness goals. I'm a typical girl so my 'goal' is to lose weight and tone up, while some of the men in the class appear to be there more to build stamina, or maintain a good level of fitness.

The class follows a similar format to all Les Mills classes. It lasts 55 minutes with 11 music tracks, though you might stretch it to an hour if the teacher pauses the CD for water breaks. Unlike with Body Pump though they don't have to stop it to allow you to change equipment, or learn the moves.
The class starts with a warmup (think walk two, three clap, back two, three, clap) which is simple to pick up, but does get you warm, even at 7am in a gym high up in Mexico with all the windows open. The next track is almost a continuation of the warm-up - it's a bit more complicated in terms of steps, but it's still not hard core aerobics. This comes with the 3rd track, a high intensity aerobics number that I always think is the peak of the first half of the class. It's not. The worst is yet to come. The plyometric track has the aerobics of its predecessor mixed with lots of quick-fire movements that really wake up your brain at that time of the morning.

By this point I am literally drooping, looking at my watch, and groaning that the class is still not even half-way through. This isn't because I have the fitness level of a peanut, it's because that's precisely how the class is designed. Ready to drop, that's what you literally get to do next, down to the floor for....press-ups and planks. It's hardly a break, but it does feel like a little bit of a reprieve.

Back from the floor you are up and running, literally. I don't run. I hate it. Too much jiggles, y'see. Downstairs in the gym I can elliptical for an hour, but put me on a treadmill at a speed over about 4 and I melt into a puddle a few minutes later. I don't run for busses. I don't run away from big dogs greedily eyeing my ice cream cones. I. Don't. Run. Except, y'know, in the running part of the Body Attack class. The next couple of tracks are all about a good knees up. We have a big studio, so we run laps around it. Then we split into four groups, and run from corner to corner with some mini-jacks in between. We run clockwise and anticlockwise. We run normally, and with knees up in front of you. Lapping is permitted, but tripping people is frowned upon. I suppose you could do the same choreography standing on the spot if that's all the room you had, but it would be a bit more soul-destroying, especially if you were facing mirrors and saw nothing but jiggle. Sometimes we split into two groups and face each other in lines, sometimes we face each other in a circle, but we never face the mirrors during these tracks. I think if we did, no one would ever come back after their first class.

With the end of class in sight, it's back to our places (looking in the mirror) for some less-jiggle-inducing choreography. Maybe some jumping, maybe some 'Superman' style leaps. My favourite is where you get to stamp your feet as you jump up and down 3 times, and then forward once and back once, in the manner of a toddler having a temper tantrum.

The last part of the class is the lower body conditioning (to match the upper body work down at the half way mark). This may be squats or lunges or similar, but it always hurts, especially after you've been using these muscle groups for the good part of an hour. They include these so they can call it a cardio-tone class, but it also allows your heart rate to drop and your breathing to normalise before the final cool down and stretch.

The music for Body Attack is lively and motivating, and most songs are tunes I recognise, sung by people I don't (they favour cover versions rather than the originals). The music is reasonably timely - the latest release includes some ABBA tunes to tie in with Mamma Mia, for example, but of course they aren't using the ABBA versions. To be fair, you don't really notice who the singer is when you're huffing and grunting your way through the class, I only really know this from checking out the track listings here:

www.totallylesmills.com/home/content/category/6/2 4/50/ .


So what are the benefits of this class? Obviously, it's a great calorie burner as you're on the go for 90% of the time, running and jumping and generally moving your legs. As weight bearing exercise, this also helps with bone density. The conditioning sections help you tone (and also, y'know, prevent you from dying by giving you a breather after a massive surge of cardio work). Because you get no breaks, it's good for building stamina (the Body Attack people state this as a plus for those who engage in high energy sports like football or tennis). The steps at times are quick and fiddly, so I suppose it can help your agility, though not your grace the way a dancing class would. Overall, the class can help you reach or maintain a healthy body weight, reach or maintain a high level of fitness, and reach or maintain good bone density, making Body Attack a good defence against poor health in the future.

Any downsides? Well, even though they release new music and choreography every 3 months, there are only so many moves in the Body Attack repertoire, so it can seem a bit repetitive. I don't mind this (and to be honest, Body Pump and Body Combat also recycle their moves) but if you crave fresh challenges every week, this may not be the class for you.

The instructors offer lower intensity versions of some of the moves (you can step rather than jump, for example) which helps beginners, but can also leave some wondering why they're walking out of there on two feet and nice and dry while the rest of us are crawling out drenched. It seems that the classes are designed for full intensity with easier options then added in, rather than the other way round. Personally I would like to see the odd HIGH high intensity option, just to have something to work towards, but then I am a lifelong subscriber to the No Pain, No Gain school of thought.

As a franchised class, theoretically you should get the same experience wherever you are in the world, though you will have to learn the local lingo they throw in especially on the conditioning moves ('Suave' (smooth) is apparently Mexican fitness speak for 2-up, 2-down). I would recommend this class as a motivating way to get a good cardio workout - certainly the sense of being there in a group class makes me keep going even when I want to drop, afraid of looking like a wuss, which is not the case when I'm alone on a cardio machine. You need no special talent nor equipment nor clothing for this class (usual gym gear is fine). You do not need to be an athlete. At my gym since we have only one instructor, you do need to be able to look a mullet in the eye for an hour without laughing, but it's not too hard (worryingly, I see weirder things on my 5 minute pre-dawn walk to the gym than her hair when I get there). Recommended.


www.lesmills.com/global/en/members/bodyattack/

Summary: A cardio workout that kills you...in a good way